Boston’s urban farmers are adjusting to climate change
Urban farmers in Boston’s underserved communities are adapting to a changing climate this spring, following the fifthwarmest winter in the city’s history.
After a season the Northeast Regional Climate Center dubbed “the winter that wasn’t,” farmers in East Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan — neighborhoods where many people rely more on city crops for fresh, healthy food — have been drawing on new technologies and local government support to protect their harvests from increasingly irregular weather patterns.
“Everything that the rhythm of nature used to do we’re having to make up for,” said Kannan Thiruvengadam, director of Eastie Farm in East Boston. “We kind of messed up that rhythm.”
An unexpected frost this winter destroyed an estimated 40 to 50 percent of the seedlings at Eastie Farm, based in the Jeffries Point neighborhood, Thiruvengadam said. Those plants were meant to provide affordable, fresh produce to families and individuals throughout East Boston’s majority minority community.
Miguel Ashley, greenhouse manager at the Urban Farming Institute, which operates sites in Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury, said flowering plants at the group’s Mattapan location suffered similar frost damage this winter. The hyacinths, grown alongside food crops, play an important role in drawing pollinators to the farm.
“It’s survival,” Ashley said. “If the plants don’t survive as well, the insects don’t survive — and we suffer.”
Climate change causes warm winters, leading plants to bloom or flower prematurely and leaving them vulnerable to damaging frosts at the end of the season, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Resilience Toolkit.
Sabrina Pilet-Jones, an assistant farm manager and educational coordinator at the Urban Farming Institute, said communities where the organization operates depend on urban farming for fresh, healthy produce.
Jones said the nutrition access in neighborhoods like Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury isn’t exactly a “food desert.” It’s more of a “food mirage.”
“Yes, we might have supermarkets, but are they the best markets?” Jones said. “Are they providing us the best quality and freshest food? No.”
Unlike larger grocery stores, which sell produce transported from different states and countries, urban farm stands sell fruits and vegetables harvested a few days prior, Jones said.
This year’s warm winter also left behind less melting snow, a key springtime water source for plants, Thiruvengadam said, so farmers will need to start watering their crops earlier.
But replacing natural precipitation is an expensive and timeconsuming process, he said. In order to access the city water supply, urban farms need funds to construct piping. This was a financial hurdle for Eastie Farm, and one of its locations is still not connected to municipal water, Thiruvengadam said.
Urban farmers can receive permission to draw water from nearby fire hydrants, Thiruvengadam said. But that was a logistical challenge at one of Eastie Farm’s sites, because the closest hydrant was across a busy street.
Mayor Michelle Wu launched GrowBoston: the Office of Urban Agriculture in February 2022 to assist urban farmers with these technical challenges and improve citywide food access.
“The City of Boston has a long history of urban agriculture as well as food justice activism,” a city spokesperson wrote from the Mayor’s Office. “And we are continuing this tradition with increased investment of public resources.”
Theresa Strachila, program manager of GrowBoston’s Grassroots Program, said the office provides grants for improvements at urban farms to help them withstand climate change.
Strachila said GrowBoston has received feedback that urban farmers need more support to navigate issues like droughts and extreme weather events worsened by climate change. The office is designing its programs to address farmers’ concerns.
“It’s a new office,” Strachila said. “The programs that we have are growing and adapting.”
GrowBoston established grants up to $100,000 in March for innovations in Boston-based food production.
Eastie Farm utilized state and city funding to build a geothermal greenhouse to keep certain crops in a protected environment without producing carbon emissions, Thiruvengadam said.
The farm also uses 100 percent renewable energy purchased through the city’s Community Choice Electricity program, he said.
By helping residents establish urban farms, GrowBoston also promotes the expansion of city green spaces that can mitigate the urban heat island effect, Strachila said. That occurs when dense concentrations of buildings and pavement absorb and re-emit heat from the sun, according to the Environmental Protection Agency website.
The phenomenon is intensified by climate change and disproportionately impacts low-income communities of color, according to the site.
Strachila said GrowBoston focuses on helping urban farmers establish plots on historically redlined communities that were often denied — and in some cases still lack — access to park space and tree canopy.
“We can’t undo things,” Strachila said. But the office is “trying to plan and do better.”